Am I a bad American? 
I've been thinking about this for a while, and I figured I might as well start this new site out with a bang. Am I a bad American?I ask this for a couple of reasons. First off, I've never voted and I don't plan on voting in the next election, and I really don't understand the idea of national pride.
I actually only registered to vote a couple months ago. I've never felt that it was all that important. One might argue that it's a national duty to be heard, but I've never been able to jump on that wagon. Maybe it's our system of voting, or it could be that any faith I would have had was lost as a result of the Florida tallying fiasco a few years ago.
Admittedly, I really don't know what any of the presidential candidates stand for. About the only thing I do know is that there's a black guy, and old fart, and a broad trying to get the big seat. I could probably research it a little, but I don't have the time, the patience, or even the interest. For those reasons, I believe that it's my patriotic duty to abstain entirely. Voting for someone without knowing all the facts about all of the candidates is, in my eyes anyway, totally irresponsible.
Speaking of patriotic duty, I don't really understand the sense of national pride that we have in America. I actually started thinking about this on 9/12 when all of the flags started popping up on everybody's lawns. Why did it take a national disaster and a few thousand people dying to make people realize that they are proud to be Americans? Shouldn't that sense of pride been there in the first place, and even if it was, how is that emphasized by having a cheap plastic flag jammed into your yard? If anything, the decorations should have already been there but they weren't, and that makes me take their meaning even less seriously.
Don't get me wrong, I love being an American. Any country that gives me the right to post a message like this into a public forum is ok by me, but I just don't understand the behaviors of other citizens. I guess I can blame my apathy on a mixture of biased media and my feeling that no matter who is in office, my life hasn't become substantially worse or better. We are settling on a house on Monday, so maybe my opinions on that will change over the next couple years. Here's to hoping.